Rabbi Chaim Walder: Serial Jewish Rapist and Child Molester

In 2021 the ultra-Orthodox jewish world was rocked by a scandal that has been called the ‘Charedi Jimmy Savile’ (1) with prolific ultra-Orthodox children’s author and advocate Rabbi Chaim Walder was accused by multiple ultra-Orthodox women and children of raping them then eventually committed suicide in December of that year.

As Amy Spiro wrote in the ‘Times of Israel’:

‘When Debbie Gross heard last year that wildly popular Haredi author Chaim Walder had been publicly accused of sexually abusing multiple women and young girls, she was not remotely surprised.

Gross, the founder and executive director of the Tahel Crisis Center for Religious Women and Children, had been hearing from victims of the therapist and public figure for more than two decades.

“We got calls concerning Chaim Walder already 25 years ago,” Gross told The Times of Israel in a recent phone interview. “But they were anonymous. So there was nothing we could do with them. I can’t go to the police when I don’t have victims willing to come forward.”

In November, a shocking exposé in the Haaretz daily alleged that Walder – a renowned and trusted figure in the ultra-Orthodox world – had sexually abused and raped multiple women, including several while they were minors and many who had come to him for therapeutic care. After the article was published, more than a dozen further victims came forward to detail their own stories of abuse at his hands spanning decades.

In an interview on Channel 13 news that aired in March, Romi Schwartz spoke publicly for the first time about the assault and rape she suffered at the hands of Walder, a distant relative, from the time she was 17. In 2008, she went to the police to complain, but the case was closed a year later. Walder’s family later convinced her to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and paid her NIS 500,000 in hush money.

Walder denied all of the allegations throughout, despite a conviction in late December from a Safed rabbinical court headed by the city’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu following testimony from 22 victims and the presentation of other evidence. On December 27, six weeks after the article was published — and a day after Eliyahu publicized his findings — Walder took his own life at the gravesite of his son at the age of 53.’ (2)

This was bad enough in that, yet another prominent rabbi had been exposed as a serial rapist and child molester, (3) but it got worse since – as Spiro notes – the ultra-Orthodox basically believed Rabbi Walder hadn’t done anything particularly wrong as was shown by their lack of action:

‘In the immediate aftermath of the Walder scandal, the well-known Eichler’s bookstore in Brooklyn announced that it was removing his books from its shelves, and the Israeli Haredi supermarket chain Osher Ad followed suit. But in early March, it was easy to find Walder’s books in stores in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods across Jerusalem.

At a branch in Givat Shaul of Yefe Nof Feldheim – Walder’s publisher – his books were on display, but not prominently. At the nearby Dani Books, a full shelf of Walder’s books exists, tucked away in the back. In Mea She’arim, practically every bookstore still stocks his offerings, including the famed Manny’s – a frequent target of extremist vandals unhappy with the shop’s wide selection – which boasts a full bookcase of his works. On the website of Steimatzky, the largest bookstore chain in Israel, most of Walder’s titles are still available for purchase, though its biggest competitor, Tzomet Sefarim, appears to have wiped the books from its online catalogue.

Paley said that following Mishpacha’s decision to address the Walder scandal, Yefe Nof Feldheim — once a major advertiser in the publication — cut ties. “But we said we’re ready to pay the price. We’re not here to do business.” (The US-based Feldheim Publishers, however, which published his works in English, announced several days after the news broke that it was halting sales.)

He noted that following Mishpacha’s editorials on the topic, the magazine received an influx of letters for and against the decision to address the issue.

“I’m very proud that we got tons of letters from readers, all kinds of letters,” he said. “Some criticized us, saying ‘why do my kids need to read this?’… And the answer to that is because we want you to protect your kids.”

Other letters, he said, denounced the magazine “for buying the narrative of the secular media.”

Ultimately, he said, “we felt that we have a responsibility to create a discussion and to structure the discussion… We had to be clear, and super clear, that we are here, first, to stand for the victims. We’re here to make sure that our kids and our families and our society will be safe.”’ (4)

Put another way: a few big jewish bookstores stopped selling Walder’s books but many simply refused to do so and by their inaction showed that they didn’t view Walder’s rape of jewish women and children as being something bad or abhorrent but instead something acceptable even relatively normal.

It makes you think they take the following passage from Tractate Sanhedrin from the Babylonian Talmud at it is word:

‘A maiden three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her; (if a niddah) she defiles him who has connection with her, so that he in turn defiles that upon which he lies, as a garment which has lain upon (a person afflicted with gonorrhea).’ (5)

Not wonder orthodox and ultra-orthodox jews have such a huge paedophile and child molester problem!

References

(1) https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/the-charedi-jimmy-savile-has-left-us-all-in-shock-d4zzgged; the actual Jimmy Savile was also extremely close to jews, Israel and Zionism despite their desperate attempts to bury such a close connection. On this see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jimmy-savile-the-jew-loving-zionist

(2) https://www.timesofisrael.com/6-months-after-the-walder-abuse-scandal-broke-has-the-haredi-world-seen-change/ also see https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/the-charedi-jimmy-savile-has-left-us-all-in-shock-d4zzgged

(3) For the sheer scope of the problem Cf. Michael Lesher, 2014, ‘Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities’, 1st Edition, McFarland: Jefferson

(4) https://www.timesofisrael.com/6-months-after-the-walder-abuse-scandal-broke-has-the-haredi-world-seen-change/

(5) Sanhedrin 55a, Babylonian Talmud (Soncino Edition)